Sarah Zielinski

Sarah Zielinski

Editor, Print at Science News Explores

Sarah Zielinski wanted to be a marine biologist when she was growing up, but after graduating from Cornell University with a B.A. in biology, and a stint at the National Science Foundation, she realized that she didn’t want to spend her life studying just one area of science — she wanted to learn about it all and share that knowledge with the public. In 2004, she received an M.A. in journalism from New York University’s Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program and began a career in science journalism. She worked as a science writer and editor at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the American Geophysical Union’s newspaper Eos and Smithsonian magazine before becoming a freelancer. During that time, she started her blog, Wild Things, and moved it to Science News magazine, and then became an editor for and frequent contributor to Science News Explores. Her work has also appeared in Slate, Science, Scientific American, Discover and National Geographic News. She is the winner of the DCSWA 2010 Science News Brief Award and editor of the winner of the Gold Award for Children’s Science News in the 2015 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards, “Where will lightning strike?” published in Science News Explores. In 2005, she was a Marine Biological Laboratory Science Journalism Fellow.

All Stories by Sarah Zielinski

  1. Animals

    To study turkey instincts, consider robot turkeys

    In 2004, Australian researchers built robot turkeys to study the instincts of Australian brush turkey chicks. Robots can be a useful way of learning more about animals, but the use of robots has yet to take over in animal behavior studies.

  2. Plants

    How weeds hitchhike across the country

    A drive down a muddy lane can be fun, but it can also pick up the seeds of weeds or invasive species and transport them far away.

  3. Physics

    Cruise through a collider

    Now anyone can tour the Large Hadron Collider and other CERN experiments in 360-degree photo panoramas online.

  4. Animals

    Green sea slugs aren’t solar powered after all

    Several species of sea slugs hold on to algal chloroplasts, digesting them weeks or months later. Scientists assumed the creatures were able to use these chloroplasts to make their own food in lean times. A new study finds that at least two of the species aren't solar powered after all.

  5. Animals

    Migration is a deadly time for raptors

    For a bird or any other animal that migrates a long distance, it’s sure to face a host of dangers. The story is no different for raptors.

  6. Animals

    Tibet may be ancient home of big cats

    A recently discovered fossil skull and teeth suggest that the ancestor of all big cats lived in what's now Tibet.

  7. Animals

    Deer and other animals can survive being impaled

    Whether they are hunting shots gone wrong or something more sinister, stories of animals surviving such misfortunes are not uncommon.

  8. Animals

    Myna birds don’t benefit from brainstorming

    Mynas birds are actually a lot worse at problem solving when working in a group.

  9. Plants

    In dry times, these trees invest in ants

    The insects provide adequate defense by ganging up on leaf-eating caterpillars and biting their undersides until the herbivores fall off the tree.

  10. Animals

    Birds avoid the sounds of roads

    The sound of cars driving down a road is enough to deter many bird species from an area.

  11. Materials Science

    Qingsongite

    This newly christened mineral has an atomic structure that’s similar to diamond and nearly as hard.

  12. Animals

    The daemon cat that never was

    Buried in a volume published in 1904 is a description of a new species of cat found in Transcaucasia: Felis daemon, the Black Wild Cat.